Chapter Text
Never kill a unicorn. It wasn't law because it didn't need to be. You didn't need a law for something everybody knew.
Unicorns were magic. They were the conduit to the gods above. Temple Virgins would draw them forth from forest and field when they were needed, otherwise they were left undisturbed.
So it went for centuries uncounted as the world changed, as magic was tamed and brought under control, as the country grew into something worthy of the name.
As time passed mages joined with artificers to devise ways to use magic for mundane tasks. Life became easier, the country no longer solely dependent on muscle and horse power.
The first Device was created by Howard of the Family Stark, one of the first mage-artificers and brilliant with it. It was a physical object capable of storing magic, capable of allowing ordinary people to draw on magic, to use sigil-marked objects to activate pre-designated spells, as if a mage was right there in the room with them. Every Device still needed a mage to empower it, needed a mage to recharge it, but Devices opened up an entirely new world of possibilities.
At least to those who could afford them. Mages as a rule didn't work cheaply.
It was Howard's son, Anthony, a mage-artificer even more brilliant than his father, who discovered another way.
History would never agree on the truth of what happened. Some scholars argued that he'd found the unicorn freshly dead. Others, that he'd killed it himself. Whichever side they fell on, they all agreed it was Anthony who discovered that unicorns were literally made of magic.
Anthony Stark was many things. An inventor, a genius. A mage-artificer the likes of which the country had never seen. But one thing he was not was devout. While he paid lip-service to the gods above, those few he allowed close to him doubted he truly believed. When he found the unicorn—and it was freshly dead; devout or not, even he wouldn't kill a unicorn—it seemed logical to take the creature, brimming with magic, and see what he could make of it.
What he made were Devices more simply and more powerful than any he'd ever seen. The smallest sliver of the unicorn's horn, a palmful of the unicorn's blood, and he had a Device beyond anything even his power could create.
He stopped after the twelfth Device. With a wave of his hand he incinerated the unicorn's corpse, he incinerated the Devices, near-invisible flame flaring high, until nothing but powdery ash remained. He was a genius. He knew what would happen if it became common knowledge, because faith was faith, and the gods were the gods, but measured against what he'd just discovered they suddenly felt very small.
Anthony was a genius and he was right about the smallness of faith. He simply hadn't realised it was more than faith in the gods above that would be betrayed.
There was one person Anthony didn't protect his secret from. One person he didn't take every precaution against. And why would he? Obadiah was a dear friend, trustworthy and true, a second father to Anthony when his own died.
Obadiah found out what Anthony had discovered. Measured against holding faith with his friend, with his family-in-all-but-blood, the potential for money and power easily won out.
He stole Anthony's secret and went to create his own Devices.
Never kill a unicorn. They were conduits to the gods above. But it wasn't against the law, and to Obadiah and the men and women he found that was all that mattered. They'd be able to make Devices more powerful, more simply, than anything else that existed. They could make their fortunes. What were the lives of animals compared to that?
Word spread. More people came to join Obadiah: mages, artificers, common folk and hunters. They all wanted in on the beginning of what promised to be a lucrative venture.
Finding virgins wasn't easy, but they managed, even if the virgins weren't always willing.
Still others came, but they didn't come to join. They were devout men and women and they came to stop the killing. They came to save the unicorns, and they were prepared—some were downright eager, seeking vengeance for the unicorns who'd already died—to kill anyone they needed to.
It spread across the country like a slow burn.
Anthony, pricked by conscience and helplessness at what he'd unwittingly unleashed, went to Prelate Margaret Carter, the head of the Temple, and laid everything at her feet. Prelate Carter went to the Queen. They sent the Royal Guard and the Temple Wardens to stop the killing of human and unicorn alike, but there were brief, bloody skirmishes before things were brought under control.
Together Prelate and Queen hammered out a way forward. What had been found could not be unfound, but the violence had to end before the country blazed into civil war. New laws were created. The Crown, to whom every wild creature belonged, ceded ownership of unicorns to the Temple and passed a law: the punishment for killing a unicorn was death.
But Anthony's discovery couldn't be undone. It couldn’t be taken back—and as beloved as unicorns were of the gods above, as firmly embedded as unicorns were in their worship, even Prelate Carter could see how much better her people would be if Devices were readily available to all, and she served her people first. In exchange for the protection granted to unicorns everywhere else, Temple and Crown created hunting preserves: parcels of land deep in the wild where unicorns could be killed.
Making it work wouldn't be easy. Emotions were high on both sides, but the Queen was beloved and Prelate Carter had long ago mastered the Temple and all who served within it. There were none who would defy her. They found an unexpected ally in Anthony, who had, while they were crafting new laws, designed half a dozen new Devices: ones to give light and heat to houses, ones to cook food without the use of a fire, ones to keep a box cold to prevent food from spoiling, small ones and large ones and ones in between. Each and every one designed to make life easier for the most ordinary of people and every one so far beyond the Device Obadiah was peddling they were barely recognisable as the same thing.
It was vengeance and penance all at once, Prelate Carter realised as he offered them to her, and she rested her hand on his head in forgiveness and benediction. With this last piece, unstinting generosity from a man she was certain didn't even believe in the gods above, it would be possible.
And, her own internal cynic noted, everyone knew unicorns moved at the will of the gods. If that happened to carry them into the preserves, well, who were they to question the gods' will?